brian: i admiredded the anthony shadid book a great deal. yipe, i read it just after he had died. shadid was a reporter for a long time for "the washington post" and the "new york times" and died related to an as ma -- asthma attack covering the civil war in syria. he grew up in oklahoma, of all places, an american-lebanese family. he ended up fascinated by the middle east, became a reporter, and the life mission was to try to explain this region to americans, which is no easy thing to do. he covered his -- more than his share of wars issue and in the course of that, sort of his first marriage fell apart because he was always overseas covering the war. he ends up buying his family's old ramshackled house somewhere in lebanon. i forget the name of the village, and takes a year off to restore the house. it sounds like a movie, almost, which he does with great difficulty. the book, his memoir, blends in both lebanese history, and it's glorious past, which is sadly been destroyed through civil war, as well as his own personal story so we sort of -- it was -- shortly before the book ca